The pure arc of a snowboard turn can make riders feel like part of a hundred-year-old tradition. However, most of us have watched snowboarding spring up before our very eyes, and the early origins of this young sport can only be traced back as far as the 1960's. Over the next decade, early pioneers like Jake Burton, Demetrije Milovich and Tom Sims created more specialized and refined board designs. By the early 80's a handful of snowboard brands were on the market, including Burton, Winterstick, Sims, Barfoot, Avalanche and Gnu. . .

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- The snowboard craze hit a crescendo in the mid-eighties, sweeping through ski resorts across the US. Along with it came an early "bad boy" image, based largely on the fact that adolescent males (who acted exactly like adolescent males on skis) comprised the majority of snowboarders at the time. A rebel reputation was established and is still prevalent today, despite snowboarding's vast appeal to men and women of all ages.
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Some ski resorts banned snowboarding during this early phase but have since come to accept the wildly popular and still growing winter sport. A few resorts are still holding out against all odds, but it seems unlikely that their skier-only policies will last. In the year 2000, snowboarding was the fastest-growing sport in the US (followed by skateboarding) with the number of people who went snowboarding increasing 51.2 percent from the previous year to a total of just over 7.2 million participants. Downhill skiing grew by just six percent, with a total of 14.7 million participants. (Stats are from the fourteenth annual American Sports Data Superstudy of Sports Participation.)